Despite Harrogate’s fascinating RAW and Hasslehoff’s postings and Oxymoron’s post about men, fruit, and beer (more limes for me and my coronas!), and Solon’s Moonie post, I’m still focused on politics and cartoons and still concerned with timing.
In Sunday’s Simpsons’ episode, Homer joined the Army. Briefly, the episode acknowledges the low salaries of enlisted men and the heartache in leaving one’s family, but then it switches gears to a rather negative portrayal of the military and a critique (albeit via Springfield) of the situation in Iraq. As with in the Family Guy episode, the Army comes across as desperate (accepting suicidal teens and Homer Simpson), incompetent (Homer outsmarts the military), homosexual, dispensable (front line infantry in particular) and as a brutish occupying force. All these points are perhaps valid – recruitment is down, standards for enlistment have lowered, “don’t ask don’t tell” has always been controversial, front line soldiers are dying daily, and there have been countless cases of questionable military brutality. As I’ll discuss later, it’s not so much the subject as the timing. Anyhoo…when the Army finally surrenders to Springfield, Lisa wonders when “they” will learn that “an occupational force can never defeat a determined local populace.” Just in case the connection to Vietnam wasn’t clear enough, Lisa makes the connection.
As with many Simpsons’ episodes, the cultural, social, political, etc references are rich – this episode was no exception (the Bugs Bunny parody was particularly amusing). However, the timing of this episode left me feeling saddened. The situation in Iraq, the struggles of the military at home and abroad certainly belong on the public’s radar and make easy fodder for satire, but the appropriateness of airing this episode on the weekend of Veterans’ Day I question. Appropriateness I realize is a matter of taste and opinion, but I can’t help but think that the airing of these three episodes (see my earlier cartoon post) within a 7 day period that sees not only an election but also Veteran’s Day seems to suggest a larger and more disturbing narrative.
Despite Solon’s valid observation that the writers likely had little to do with the timing of the episodes, I feel like the timing is not accidental. Each episode had strong messages (brute force=bad, occupying Iraq=bad, military=not bright) relevant to the elections and to the current situation in Iraq. Had the episode aired a few weeks from now or a few weeks earlier, I may not have flinched, but airing 3 episodes that are so critical of the armed forces during the same week that we should be honoring those who have served undermines the comedy.
PS - A clip of the episode is available on You.tube but as it's 10+ min. long I haven't posted it.
5 comments:
We are at a point now ehere there is absolutely no way to portray the war in Iraq in such a way that doesn't leave us all feeling disturbed and depressed. There is civil war there, American troops are dying there with frightening regularity, and the country has never been given a clear definition of what winning would look like. That's just where we are.
And Harrogate believes that its about time there was this much attention being paid to the situation, to the lack of a clear goal, to the lack of a strategy, etc. If only the corporate media had not whored this war to the American people in 2002, perhaps it wouldn't be necessary now to deconstruct it.
Many soldiers, and many Republicans, complain about how the media hammers away on Iraq. Yet Harrogate has never ever heard a single admission from any of these people that in the run up to this war, the same media whored it out to us as though it were going to be some 1950s Hollywood movie with George W. Bush heroically leading us to the promised land, fixing the Middle East in one fell swoop, etc. But it was precisely this whoring that got Bush the support he needed from the people, which in turn pressured a midterm-wary Congress into authroizing him to do whatever he damned well pleased.
So given this context, the problem as Harrogate sees it is not that the media have finally woken up, but that it took them so long and so many were killed. And, what better time to question, scrutinize, criticize, what is happening with our foreign policy, in the media, than during an election season? And what more appropriate time to question what is happening with our military than during Veterans Day?
Sorry for the rant, but Harrogate bristles very much at the notion that the war in Iraq has gone downhill because of the media. The media enabled, facilitated, and in many ways created this whole damned mess in the first place. There was never a concrete, communicable justification for this action, there was never a definition of winning, it was always crazy, as Lisa Simpson reminds us, to believe that we could occupy a nation indefinitely and that the natives of that land would be fine with it.
Oh, and the drumbeat for war in 2002 made a lot of peoiple very rich, particualrly in the media. People glued to 24 hour news channels and advertising in partisan blogs exemplifies this. Now there's no money to be made romanticizing it because it's just too ersatz now to be romanticized.
A lot of women wanted to scrog Jim Morrison 8 ways to Sunday when he was alive, but none want to exhume his corpse today and roll around on him. Excepting, of course, a few very strange people. But then, there are also a new neocons left who argue that everything is splendid with this occupation.
The issue for me lies in the target of the satire rather than the timing. I write this having not seen the clip (YouTube being down for maintainence and all). The question I have: Is it possible to criticize or satirize the military as an industry / organization / armed wing of the neocons without criticizing troops?
The Republicans and media (tip the hat to Harrogate) have gotten very good at turning every critique of the war in Iraq into a personal attack on the troops that serve there (ask John Kerry). Is the episode attacking the men and women who serve or the system that put them there and guides their actions? Is it even possible to split that thin but certainly significant hair?
The timing for me is less of an issue but mostly because I don't put a lot of stock in memorial holidays. My cynicism comes from the co-option of these times for purposes other than their intent. Do we (the collective we as a nation) honor the day as a tribute to military personnel or the military itself? I would like to think it is about Veterans but all too often I think it slips into a glorification of the military. Perceptions of which are tightly controlled by this administration....
To be honest, even at the end of this rambling, I still don't know where I stand.
Whether Veterans' Day honors the military collectively or veterans (I think veterans), the Simpsons episode acts as only one instance of many where the individual troops come under fire. I agree with Harrogate that this past week provided a good opportunity to bring many of the issues re. Iraq to light, but while Lisa's speech at the end of the episode hints at larger issues of war and politics, the bulk of the episode provides a non-flattering caricature of the troops. As Harrogate and Southpaw have pointed out, "the media" (whoever "they" are) has been doing this for months. Admittedly many of the troops' actions have been disgraceful. But what of the hundreds and thousands of veterans who are admirable human beings and served their country with honor? For them, these episodes are an insult and the timing of the airing makes it more so.
In terms of how soldiers are represented in the media particularly, it is important to recognize that they are, quite approproately, overwhelmingly framed in a positive way. Whether it's the news, or movies, or pop music, or as we have recently seen Pro Wrestling, soldiers are glorified in this country ALMOST uniformly.
The particular examples you cite, p-duck, come from television programs which gave always been ruthlessly satirical. It doesn't seem fair to envision _The Simpsons_ and _Family Guy_ as symptomatic of widespread representational trends.
This is not to deny the very real importance of the satire, or its worthiness of being discussed. Your post is very well written and asks some uncomfortable questions about where such disrespectful iconography comes from. Harrogate suggests that they were inevitable given Gitmo and other high-profile scandals that are really the fault of the policy makers but wind up getting laid at the feet of soldiers. But it is something that is in the air, and is therefore going to find its way into the larger discussion.
As long as we recognize that honoring soldiers is still very much the overwhelming norm in this society, then we are in total agreement here, p-duck.
Thanks for the provocative post, keep em coming!
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